The present invention relates to the continuous spooling of wire, and more specifically to continuous spooling wherein there is produced a relatively long length of wire (a "long end") at the starting or inside end of the wire on the reel, which length of wire is accessible externally of the reel.
It is conventional for wire to be taken from the drawing machine and continuously spooled on a pair of associated reels. See for example U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,763,443; 3,086,721 and 3,368,765, all of which are owned by the assignee of this application. As will be appreciated, it is undesirable that the wire-drawing machine be shut down to transfer the wire feed from a filled reel to an empty one. Therefore, means have been devised to automatically shift the wire from a full reel to an empty one while the wire-drawing machine remains in operation. The reels may be mounted side-by-side, on parallel axes (as in the above referenced patents), or in other orientations.
In a variety of applications of spooled wire, it is frequently desirable that both the starting (or inside) and the terminal (or outer) ends of the wire of the full reel be readily accessible prior to unwinding. This simplifies "follow on" processes, since ends can then be joined to assure continuous operation. For this purpose it is preferred that the inside wire end have a relatively long end so as to facilitate such a process.
Accordingly, one object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus which produces a relatively long end ofWIRE AT THE STARTING (INSIDE) END OF THE WIRE ON THE BARREL OF THE REEL.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a continuous spooler apparatus for winding wire or cable continuously onto reels without the need to stop the winding machine.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide an apparatus for transferring the supply of wire from a full reel to an empty reel in a continuous wire spooling machine without accumulating wire in a corner of a full reel.